Moments
by Vixen of Light
Summary: A series of moments in the relationships of pairs of characters. Romance/humour/horror/friendship. I take requests for the next chapters!
1. Snape and Bellatrix

Snape was always in control, to the outside eye. So calm, so poised, so perfectly untouchable, even with the Dark Lord himself.

Bella was all wildfire and madness, swirling hair and flashing eyes, some banshee nightmare from ancient poetry. Bella reminded a watcher why Muggles feared wizards. Bella could have been the origin for any number of fairy-tale monsters who crept from the night to eat the flesh of children.

Bella could truly never understand why the Lord gave his slow, humourless smiles to the impassive Snape and not her, with her Purest blood, her adoring worship and her talent for torment. Snape nagged at her like an escaped victim, doing nothing of note, surely, and yet always in the highest regard.

They would sit in one of many undisclosed locations in high-backed chairs of ancient dark wood in a room all layered with wine-red velvet curtains and flickering candles, casting a thousand deep shadows on the walls, sticky with some fluid or other (she forgets what or who after a while) and Bella would listen as a priestess serving her god to the Lord's words, and then he would walk in and take the empty seat at the Lord's right hand, opposite her (but left was sinister, surely better?).

"Madam LeStrange," he said mockingly, inclining his head towards her. She pursed her lips as though tasting something bitter. He smiled thinly. Oh, how she hated that name!

They all listened to Snape, as if he was the one who had suffered for the Lord, as if he knew what was right, that back-street boy infinite classes below the rest of them. Bella fingered her wand, imagining how he would scream. Would it be high and pleading, or would be pretend he could take it? Sometimes they did. But they all gave in, in the end. She smiled.

"Something amusing, Madam?" Snape asked her politely, and the smile drained from her face to leave raw fury.

"Nothing," she hissed, bile in her throat, choking her, burning her. He raised an eyebrow, paused a little too long and then turned away from her, as if she was of no further interest.

When the meeting broke up, she pulled her blackthorn wand from her robe, thrilling in the feeling of it in her hand, throbbing hatred through her, and strode after him. He lingered a little too long in an empty corridor, and she, as tall as him, smiling like a tiger, pressed the tip of her wand, glowing red-hot, into his scrawny neck.

"What will it take," she snarled, "To make you lose control?"


	2. Draco and Ginny

Of all the people she had not expected to see in London Quidditch Suppliers Ltd, it was Draco Malfoy, who was rumoured, now he could not buy his way onto a team, to have never picked up a broom again. But there he was, peering myopically at a selection of leg guards with just the faintest hint of his old sneer on his lips.

"Hello there, miss," said the overly cheery sales assistant, zooming up to Ginny with unnecessary speed. "Can I interest you in today's special offer on Beaters' bats?"

"No thanks, I'm a Chaser," she said distractedly. "I'm just browsing, thanks." Her eyes were still fixed curiously on Draco's profile.

"OK," said the assistant, discouraged by her lack of reaction, and bobbed off to accost a young man looking at decorated Snitches. Draco glanced up, and looked a little taken aback to see her, although, Ginny thought, there was more reason for her to be found in the Quidditch shop than him!

"Afternoon," he said stiffly, inclining his head towards her. She nodded at him."Afternoon, Mal- Draco." She floundered a little. "So, thinking of getting back into Quidditch?"

He pursed his lips. "Actually, I always quite enjoyed it," he admitted after a short pause, with a candidness that quite surprised her. "So I thought while I have some free time I might get in a little practise."

"Oh, the life of the young, free and rich," she smiled wryly, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Didn't I hear you just got signed to the Holyhead Harpies' reserve team, though?"

"I did," she said, "Slughorn actually introduced me to the Captain a few years ago and she saw me flying and liked some of my moves. I guess that Club was good for something, after all..."

"Well, congratulations," he said politely, turning to face her completely. She stepped a little closer, wondering what on earth Hermione – and Harry! – would say if they saw her chatting amiably to Draco Malfoy, of all people, in this surreal setting. "You've been keeping up with the Quidditch news, I guess," she said, and he nodded.

"I don't think people appreciated that I actually did like it," he said, dryly. "My parents and I used to go and watch matches when I was younger. Father sometimes used to play with me when I was very young."

Ginny stared at him in astonishment. That was more than she had learned about him in six whole years of sharing a school with him. Quidditch, the great uniter! She thought, amazed. She titled her head and looked closely at his face. He looked older, more thoughtful, perhaps. Still the old arrogance, but at least there was some sort of openness beginning to bloom.

"Fancy going for a quick drink somewhere and catching up?" she said, on the strangest whim that had hit her for a while.

He blinked, then actually laughed. "Yeah, why not?" he agreed. Ginny grinned. Well, rebuilding the new world might as well start with some good old-fashioned Quidditch talks.


	3. Lily and James

Dinner at the Gryffindor table was a surprisingly merry affair. How could he always make her laugh? Why was he always turning to look at her, whisper something in her ear, joke with her? He didn't even know that she had, in a fit of stupid nostalgia, spent the afternoon by the lake where she and Severus used to sit once upon a more naive time. How could he?

"You cheered me up so much," said Lily, happily, almost leaning into James' shoulder. "Lifesaver. Thank you."

James looked at her with an odd expression in his brown eyes, lips twisted a little, and said, "Glad I can be your entertainment."

Looking back, Lily wished then she had said something like "You're more than that" or at least tried to explain why having someone you thought was your best friend stab you in the back _hurt_ so very badly and why the fact that she trusted James after that meant more than anything either of them could say, but instead she just looked away, shy and unsure. She was never unsure.

Which is why when he sat next to someone else the next day, it hurt far more than she had expected and that was the horrible moment she realised just how much she needed him around.

She wished she had told him that.


	4. Lockhart and Skeeter

"So, you repelled the curse using which spell precisely?" Rita tapped her quill against her notepad, bored. Professionally, of course, interviewing _Mister_ Lockhart (Order of this, Chief of that...) was one of the most sought-after scoops of the year. Personally, he was a boring blowhard who didn't even need the services of her Quick Quotes Quill. If he had done even a quarter of what he was claiming, then she, Rita Skeeter, was a Dementor.

Of course, she thought, smiling thinly to herself, there were those that thought she was. Probably the same people who believed Lockhart had repelled the vampires of Hazelmere with a garlic sausage.

To her horror, Lockhart winked at her. Her smile widened sickeningly as she realised he thought he was smiling at him. The conceit! If the Daily Prophet wasn't paying her handsomely for this...

"So," she smarmed, twisting to sit a little more comfortably, "What all our readers want to know is, have you met a potential Mrs Lockhart on the horizon?"

He demurred, waving a hand with bashfulness so fake it made even Rita wince inside.

"Oh Rita – may I call you Rita? – Rita, a gentleman never discloses such affairs...and I wouldn't want to break the hearts of so many of your dear readers and put you out of business!" he laughed, and she forced herself to titter along with him, seething inside.

"Oh, it should be fine, they'll still have me on the staff to keep up the print numbers," the words slipped from between her teeth before she could stop them.

Lockhart's bright blue eyes narrowed just a touch before he laughed with her this time, and Rita's heart did a little backflip of triumph. The problem was, she mused, they could understand each other entirely too well.

"I really would like to meet an equal, although of course I appreciate how hard that would be given all my achievements and awards over the years," he continued breezily, as if the moment of competition hadn't even happened. "But I wouldn't want to make my poor wife feel too inferior, for that would be most unheroic!"

"Couldn't have that," Rita agreed, sugar-sweet, as her Quill scribbled the words down exactly. At least it was easy money...

"So maybe you would like to accompany me to The Three Broomsticks after this interview?" he gave her a look that had entirely too much calculation under the charm, and Rita blinked. Although yes, she thought sharply, it would be something of a publicity coup for both of them, now she came to think about it. The beautiful blond celebrity couple...

Her smile was something close to genuine as she sad, "Well, why the devil not?"


	5. Draco and Voldemort

He longed to worship. He longed to be a fanatic like Aunt Bellatrix, who between her Occlumancy lessons spoke of the Lord with burning eyes and a tremor or hysteria in her voice, as if she was on the very edge of control at the mere thought of him. He longed to be able to fall to his knees as though the Lord was the light in the sky and the only air that should be breathed.

He couldn't. What he saw wasn't a god or the one true genius of the world but an ugly, soulless husk of a man, just a man, sitting on a rotting throne in his own dining hall, caressing and caressing with long, delicate fingers the head of a softly hissing snake. He wanted to shudder and run far away from this monster and never return, but he saw his father's eyes – afraid, greedy, desperate – boring into his head, and so he knelt and choked out in a high-pitched squeak,

"My Lord!"

His father barely stifled a sigh of relief. Aunt Bella nodded with rapturous approval.

"Good boy!" she shrilled in the darkness. "My pure, good nephew, who..."

"Silence, Bella," the voice issued from the white mask of a face, and she did so, instantly, eyes still alight with the fanatical worship of a priestess.

That night Draco did not sleep. He longed for the reason to be excitement, fulfilment, pride in his defence of purity...but it was nausea that welled in his throat, not pride, and it was terror singing in his veins, not ecstasy. He imagined those long, white fingers creeping towards him, snakelike and corpselike. He trembled and wept into his pillow like a child of much younger years until the sun came creeping mercifully into his room, allowing him to pretend that the previous night had simply never happened.

He boasted to the Slytherins. He walked with his head high in Hogwarts. He grovelled before the Dark Lord. But with every passing hour, every moment, every breath that stuck in his throat, the heart he never knew he had shrivelled and screamed for release from the enthroned monster he would serve until – as he knew now - his death.


End file.
